OPEC cannot turn crude “on a dime”

No OPEC meeting has ever marked a major low in crude oil prices, says Walter Zimmermann, Senior Technical Analyst at United-ICAP, who thinks that crude can continue to fall for some weeks or months to come.

Looking at the intersection of OPEC meetings and the five major bear markets in crude over the last 30 years – 1985-86, 1990-93, 1996-98, 2000-01 and 2008 – Zimmermann concludes that no OPEC meeting has, “turned trending Crude Oil prices on a dime. Even after the so-called ‘successful’ OPEC meetings, Crude prices still tend to struggle for a while.”

Zimmermann says it can take from a few weeks to several months to turn the market around, as shown below: